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High quality home audio setup on the cheap?

lattiboy — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 15:07:03 -0800

I'm moving in March and have decided I would like to put together a nice, high-quality sound setup on the cheap based around a Class-T Amp. On a whim I picked up this one for $16 and am now looking for advice on the other equipment. I am clueless when it comes to this, so please bear with me.

I will have two sources of music:

1) My main source will be a galaxy S3 that I use with a paid Spotify subscription (320kbs downloaded tracks)

2) I'd like to try out vinyl.

Questions:

- I'd like to try out vinyl, but I don't want to get sucked into a "collector k-hole" like I have been with cameras. Just a simple, cheap record player.

- What other equipment will I need for this? I know the phone has DAC built-in, but what about the record player?

- Apparently I need a pair of high-efficiency speakers.... I attempted to look for an inexpensive pair, but the world of audiophiles is strange and scary. I'd like to spend, say, $100 for a medium-sized pair? I don't know if that's a crazy low amount. Again, I'm in the dark here.

- The amp I got doesn't have a proper headphone jack, but obviously I can get an RCA-3.5mm adapter. Should I make considerations for using headphones other than that?

-Any other advice I should have entering this world?

thanks!

Home stereo amp: Tripath?

mendel — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 09:27:07 -0800

Looking for a small home-stereo amp. Tripath or something else? Back in the mid-2000s, Tripath-based (class-T) mini-amplifiers like the Sonic Impact were all the rage. But in 2007 Tripath declared bankruptcy and was bought by Cirrus, who have proceeded to do basically nothing with the audiophile T-amp chip technology.

I want to buy a small (smaller than half-width), cheap (ideally around $50) amp to power a pair of reasonably efficient Paradigm Atoms (~90dB sensitivity) with a single source (Logitech Squeezebox 3).

I know I can still find T-amps on eBay, and Sonic Impact clones from Dayton Audio, now, but I'm wondering if anything came along to usurp the throne from the Tripath chip. Should I keep looking at T-amps, or something else?

Double-amping with two amplifiers -- will it work?

humblepigeon — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 06:44:34 -0800

Double-amping fun with Class-T amps: Can it be done? I'm continuing my experiments with the Sonic Impact Class-T amps, as detailed last week.

They arrived but one was faulty, so had to be returned. I'm expecting the replacement this week.

It turns out that they don't go very loud on my speakers, and if the dial goes past half-way, distortion creeps in, especially on the high notes.

My CD player has no less than three line outputs, so what I'm thinking of doing is what I call (perhaps incorrectly) double-amping -- one line out to one amp, another to the second amp, and connecting both in parallel to the speakers. NOT bi-amping. Both high and low inputs on the speakers get 2x amplifier voltages.

Is this going to damage anything? I'm thinking more about the output from one amp going into the second amp if it isn't turned on, for example.